Day by Day Cartoon by Chris Muir

Monday, April 21, 2014

The Pig Trap

I said, “Well, you are a military man… what would that look like?”
Wheeler said, “Well, it wouldn’t look like the first Civil War… no
lines of men standing in ranks and shooting across a field at each
other, no “North and South” or sharply defined state lines for friendly
and enemy territories, at least, not in the beginning. No, it would look
more like Iraq or Afghanistan, with house to house fighting, IED’s,
snipers, small factions and independent militias operating on their own,
refugees streaming away from battle zones in all directions…”

“But the first question to ask is who would the combatants be? I
mean, the Army isn’t going to just roll out onto the street in tanks on
day one, so my guess is that it would start out as a police action, with
Federal agencies like ATF and FBI taking the lead, supported by local
law enforcement. But once people start shooting back, they would have to
ratchet things up, do things like institute curfews and roadblocks, and
they would eventually try to press the various state Guard units into
service. That’s where it all goes squirrelly, because both local law
enforcement and the Guard will be riddled with people who support gun
rights, regardless of what laws the politicians pass, and they won’t be
crazy about having to police, and maybe even fight against, their own
people. The Governors may well object to the state Guard units being
activated and may not wish to cooperate…”

“And it is not clear to me how many LEO and Guardsmen would remain
loyal to the government and how many would join the “rebellion”. My
guess is that both sides would be riddled with defections, informants,
and spies. But what if, say, the Gulf states like Texas, Alabama,
Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, and Florida secede, and they take
control of all military bases and equipment, and you suddenly have gone
from an insurgency with rifles to a breakaway nation, or maybe several
breakaway nations, armed with fighter jets, drones, tanks, and a navy?
Whoo, buddy… now all bets are off… kiss posse comitatus goodbye. This would be the ugliest thing this county has ever seen…”
I asked him several “what if” questions and let him riff on them… I
just let him talk and wargame out the Second Civil War, there in the
back seat of my car as we drove to the airport, and he painted a picture
of horrific death and destruction. Once this conflict started, even the
best-case scenarios he described sounded truly grim. He seemed to
believe that civilian casualties would be extremely high, given how much
fighting would centered in and around large cities, and that food would
be used as a weapon, causing famine and starvation on a terrifying
scale. Booby traps, IED’s, rampant bombings, drone strikes, snipers,
local-level assassinations, mortars and shelling, death squads (both
government and rebel), reprisal killings, torture… it sounded more like
the Middle East than middle America.

Wheeler got quiet for a few moments, and then he said something that I will never, ever forget.

“These people are playing with matches… I don’t think they
understand the scope and scale of the wildfire they are flirting with.
They are fucking around with a civil war that could last a decade and
cause millions of deaths… and the sad truth is that 95% of the problems
we have in this country could be solved tomorrow, bynoon… simply by dragging 100 people out in the street and shooting them in the fucking head.”

You MUST follow the link and read the whole thing. It might save lives.

Those 100 people would be the cream of Congress' liberals, and our "ear leader", I am sure...along with people like Bloomberg, whoever are the present governors of New York and Connecticut, and people like Rahm-it-to-em Emanuel...

My wife inquired about the "bronze" (cheap) Jugearscare plan - $1,600 per month / $19,200 per year. I told her we would like to eat and pay our mortgage - so she signed up for a limited (read - illegal) critical care plan that is cheaper than our present plan - but has a high deductible. We will just have to cope with the IRS' "fine" - that I understand they can only collect from possible tax refunds. I'll just have to adjust my withholding down so I don't have any refund for them to attach.

Also, if I see one line concerning any questions about health care - other than in the itemized deductions - on next year's 1040, I'm going to fill in the line with "NOYFB*", and spell out the acronym at the bottom of the page should the person reading it be too stupid to figure it out. Since I won't be expecting a refund, I'll skip the E-file and mail the thing in. I'm guessing the electronic forms don't have margins you can send those vampires subtle messages in...